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LaSalle: 'The pill' still under fire

The passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — otherwise known as Obamacare, a term now embraced by both sides — in 2010 carried plenty of controversy with it.

Initially, one of the primary complaints was the “individual mandate” that any citizens must either purchase health insurance or pay a fine. This mandate was upheld by the Supreme Court as being constitutional after it was ruled that the mandate constituted a tax.

Since then, another mandate has been getting all the attention. One provision in Obamacare forces employers that facilitate health insurance for employees include free contraception.

While the mandate includes an exemption for churches and other houses of worship, it still applies to Christian hospitals, Christian charities, Catholic universities and other enterprises owned or controlled by religious organizations that oppose contraception on doctrinal grounds.

That, of course, means the time has come to bring out the lawyers.

The Catholic Diocese of Savannah — along with three other Catholic organizations in Georgia — has recently joined over 50 other dioceses, schools, hospitals, social service agencies and other institutions that have filed suit in federal court seeking to block the mandate. With each new lawsuit, the importance of this issue in the upcoming election grows.

In the words of Bishop Gregory John Hartmayer, “Our challenge to the federal mandate is not about whether people in this country should have access to the services covered by the mandate, but rather, it is about the fundamental issue of whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to fund services which violate our religious and moral beliefs.”

I have never been particularly religious, nor am I an atheist, but I think the bishop has the right idea. Ensuring access to contraceptive health care is vastly different from forcing someone to provide it.

We can ensure that a patient has the right to access something, and we can ensure that a hospital has the right to provide the patient with that access. We cannot, however, justify using federal power to force the hospital to provide that access against their own will, any more than we can justify forcing the patient to use it.

I also have a hard time supporting the mandate being applied to religious organizations considering how many other ways there are of acquiring contraceptives, including Planned Parenthood and other similar clinics and centers. Not only is forcing religious organizations to provide the pill an overextension of federal power, it’s also unnecessary.

One metaphor made by those in support of the mandate is a comparison to the war in Iraq — their tax dollars go toward that even if they don’t believe in the war, so why shouldn’t these organizations facilitate access to contraception?

There is a crucial difference here. The war in Iraq was ostensibly going to benefit all U.S. taxpayers equally — we wouldn’t get blown up by terrorists with an Iraqi nuke. Of course, many of us don’t believe that any more, but that was the intention.

In contrast, the administrators of a Catholic university stand to benefit little from the provision of contraception to a few students.

Ultimately, I think the Obama administration or the future Romney administration will eventually overturn that particular mandate and exempt all religious organizations. That is, unless the Supreme Court beats them to it.

Alex LaSalle is an editorial department intern at the Savannah Morning News and a senior at Georgia Southern University.